All but the wealthiest readers will have noticed by now that food costs have risen this year. In May grocery prices were 4.4% higher than they were the previous May. If 4.4% doesn't sound like much--you spend $104.40 now for a cartful that was $100 a year ago--it's a huge deal to food producers and to budget shoppers, who are making lots of casseroles. The Department of Agriculture anticipates that grocery prices won't significantly fall before January; if the USDA ...

Just in case we needed more evidence of the hardship inflicted by the country's devastating economic crisis, earlier this month we got it: more Americans than ever are receiving food stamps. The Department of Agriculture reported that 35.1 million people relied on government help to buy groceries in June — 713,000 more than in the previous month and a 22% jump from the previous year's figure. The odds are better than ever that when a shopper wheels ...

One day in 1871, legend has it, a French artist named Claude Monet walked into a food shop in Amsterdam, where he had gone to escape the Prussian siege of Paris. There he spotted some Japanese prints being used as wrapping paper. He was so taken by the engravings that he bought one on the spot. The purchase changed his life — and the history of Western art. Monet went on to collect 231 Japanese prints, which greatly influenced his work ...

Not long ago I had an apple problem. Wavering in the produce section of a Manhattan grocery store, I was unable to decide between an organic apple and a nonorganic apple . It shouldn't have been a tough choice--who wants to eat pesticide residue?--but the organic apples had been grown in California. The conventional ones were from right here in New York State. I know I've been listening to too much npr because I started wondering: How much Middle Eastern ...

When India finally let its hair down after the financial liberalization of the '90s, local chefs had to radically reconsider their chutneys. Palates became younger, adventurous and erudite. The first bloke to do Indian nouvelle really well was Rahul Akerkar at Mumbai's now iconic Indigo, foodindigo.com. Then Vineet Bhatia flew back from England, two Michelin stars in his carry-on, and set up Ziya at the local Oberoi, oberoihotels.com. But Aurus , based in north Mumbai's chicster enclave ...

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration say that very low levels of radiation have turned up in a sample of milk from Washington state. But federal officials say consumers should not worry. The FDA said such findings are to be expected in the coming days because of the nuclear crisis in Japan, and that the levels are expected to drop relatively quickly. Results from a March 25 milk sample taken from Spokane, Wash., show levels ...

Th e Food and Drug Administration on Thursday released a preliminary report on the safety of meat and milk from cloned animals. Their verdict: that these food products are no different from those derived from conventionally bred animals, and are therefore safe to eat. But don't expect your local butcher to be selling hams or rib eyes from cloned animals any time soon. The FDA's report is now available to the public and open for a 90-day comment period. ...

If you want to understand the disconnect between watching cooking shows and wanting to cook, get this: Schwan's Home Service is offering Top Chef--branded frozen meals. The idea that hard-core fans who study contestants' knife skills every week would choose to order from a giant company that's been delivering frozen food to rural America for 57 years doesn't surprise Harry Balzer, who tracks food trends for the market-research firm NPD Group. "You're going to eat four to five times ...

Too much sugar will make you fat, but too much artificial sweetener will ... do what, exactly? Kill you? Make you thinner? Or have absolutely no effect at all? This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Food and Drug Administration's decision to ban cyclamate, the first artificial sweetener prohibited in the U.S., and yet scientists still haven't reached a consensus about how safe artificial sweeteners may be. Shouldn't we have figured this out by now? The ...

It is midday and Geoff Lawton is hard at work at Zaytuna Farms in New South Wales, Australia. But the real work, he says, is going on inside the center of the compost. "There's lots of things breeding in there," Lawton says. Compost may not seem a sexy subject, but within this steaming pile, life is being created. "There's organisms breathing and dying and reproducing very quickly," he says. "It's all very hot and steamy." That rich soil lays the ...